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The lawyer who represented more than 100,000 people in a settlement with BP over the 2010 Gulf of Mexico oil spillage has accused the company of viewing the US as a colony it can exploit.

....As BP’s costs related to the disaster have spiralled, it has changed stance over how it deals with claims, contesting how payouts are settled and claiming that many were “fictitious”. Last month, chief executive Bob Dudley promised the company was “digging in” on the “absurd outcomes” of the legal battles.

Mr Rice - who sits on a representative committee that negotiated a settlement with BP in March - claimed that BP’s fighting talk is a grave error and amounted to an attack on victims of the disaster.

“In our view, BP views us as a colony that they own and can exploit, it’s outrageous,” he told the Reuters news agency. “I think they’ve made a vast strategic error by fighting and shifting this whole battle to an attack on the people of the Gulf. Any goodwill they built on trying to do the right thing, they have destroyed.”

He compared BP’s position to a British attack on US-held New Orleans in 1814 during the 1812-1815 war between the two nations. “We’re going back to the 1814 attack,” he said....

.... The war of words comes as BP continues to battle claims related to the disaster, which it recently said has cost it $42.4bn (£27.3bn) to date. In the most recent fightback, it asked a US judge to prevent investors from launching a collective lawsuit against the company.

The investors allege that BP lied in order to cover up the estimated cost of the disaster in order to stem falls in its share price. BP, which denies the claims, said: "Plaintiffs must demonstrate that the alleged misrepresentations were publicly known."

Meanwhile, BP is suing the US environment agency over a blanket ban on winning new work for the US government.